Mattie stood watching her. This was the evil genius of her early life, and there was danger in her very presence. It was not safe to take her eyes from her. "What do you want?" she asked again. "It's somethin' partickler--shall we come into the parler?" "Oh! no." "I'm not well dressed enuf, I spose?--I'm not fit society for sich a nice young gal, I spose?--I'm to be turned off as if I was a beggar, instead of the woman of property which I am, I spose?" "What do you want?" repeated Mattie. "And I was your poor mother's friend, and trusted her when nobody else would, and gave her a bed to die on comforbly when there wasn't a mag to be made out of her. And I was your friend, though that's something to turn your nose up at, ain't it?" "You were kind in your way, perhaps--I cannot say, I don't know; I don't wish to remember the past any more. Will you tell me what you want, or go away?" "And you won't come into the parler?" "No." "It's the curiest story as you ever did hear. There's been a man asking arter you down our court, and asking arter me, and finding me out at last, and nearly coming to a bargain with me, when, cus my greediness, I lost him." "Asking after me?" "Ah! you may well open those black eyes of yourn--he made me stare, I can tell you. He walks one day into my house, as if it belonged to him, and says, 'Are you Mrs. Watts?' 'Yes,' I says. 'Do you remember Mrs. Gray?' he says. 'Not by name,' I says. 'She was a tramp,' he says, 'and died here.' 'Oh!' I says, 'if it's her you mean, whose name I never knowed or cared about, died here, she did.' 'And the child?' he says. 'Mattie you mean,' I says. 'Ah! Mattie,' he says. And then I says, thinking it was a dodge, my dear, for the perlice are up to all manner of tricks, and you mightn't have been going on the square, and been wanted, then I says, 'And will you obleege me with your reasons for all these questions of a 'spectable and hard-working woman?' I says. 'My name's Gray,' he says, 'and I'm Mattie's father.'" "Is this true?--oh! is it really true?" "Hopemaydropdead, my dear, if it isn't," Mrs. Watts remarked, running her words into each other in the volubility of her protestation; "hopemayneverstiragainfromhere, if t'isn't, _Miss Gray_! 'Mattie's father,' I says. 'Yes,' he says; 'is that so very wonderful?' And I says, 'Yes it is, arter all this time ago.' And then he asks all manner of questions, which I didn't see the good of answering, and so was werry ignorant, my dear, until he said he'd give me a suverin to find you out. I says, 'I'd try for a five pun note, for you was a long way off, and it'd be a trouble to look arter you.' And he says, 'I'll take that trouble,' and I didn't see the pull of that, knowing he was anxious like, and fancying that five pounds wouldn't ruin him, so I held out. And then he looked at his watch, and said he'd come again, which he never did, as I'm an honest ooman." "How long was this ago?" "Two months." "What kind of a man was he?"